When the troubled Club Bingo resort, on the northern end of the Las Vegas Strip, went bankrupt in 1950 after three years in business, its operator, former Los Angeles jeweler Milton Prell, saw a chance for recovery by building a new hotel-casino, which he would call the Sahara. Prell talked Desert Inn hotel investor A. Pollard Simon into raising the money for it, and convinced Flamingo Hotel builder Del Webb to construct the Sahara in exchange for a twenty percent ownership share.